Izrahyel
<p class="font_8"><strong>Izrahyel Francis is a Montserrat-born Caribbean artist based in Birmingham, UK. Working primarily with acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, he creates bold, symbolic figurative paintings shaped by Afro-Caribbean heritage, displacement, visibility, desire, protection and the search for belonging.</strong></p>
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<p class="font_8">His practice sits within the idea of <strong>Life Gets Better Here</strong>, exploring how pressure, humour, tenderness and inherited knowledge shape the ways people navigate everyday life. Through expressive figures and layered symbolism, Francis considers what we carry with us — culturally, emotionally and across generations — while creating space for complexity, intimacy and humour within contemporary Caribbean and Black British experience.</p>
Don't Die For Yansh
Don’t Die For Yansh explores the economy of intimacy — what we exchange in pursuit of love, attraction and validation, and what we believe those things are worth.
Across the table, a man and woman negotiate more than a date. The man appears to offer parts of himself while sitting against a chair resembling a tombstone. Opposite him, the woman weighs a mirror against a heart. A muted ear, cracked Sankofa egg and warri board bring ideas of ignored wisdom, strategy and consequence into the scene.
Using humour and exaggeration, Francis turns romance into a marketplace and asks: what are you willing to sacrifice to be desired?
Don’t Die For Yansh sits firmly in contemporary Black British culture through its language, humour and take on dating and desire. “Nyash”, rooted in Nigerian slang, has become part of everyday Black British vocabulary, especially through music and youth culture. The work plays with that familiarity, using humour to look at attraction, validation and the things people are willing to give up to feel desired.
